Favorite NNTP Client? 59
keller asks: "We all have our favourite browser, mail client and OS! So what about Usenet Reader? I have always used Netscape's built-in one, and have always been satisfied, but are there better alternatives out there. I'm not looking for any features in particular, just something easy to use and nice to look at."
The Pimp-Ass Newsreader (Score:3, Insightful)
Check it out at http://pan.rebelbase.com [rebelbase.com].
Release names (Score:2, Interesting)
SLRN or PAN, I would say. (Score:2)
Since slrn exists for nearly every major platform, those who switch between many boxen on a regular basis will benefit from having a consistent interface. Also, scoring, downloading multi-part binaries, editing your posts, and administering news groups are all simple and easy to learn.
I've tried dozens of news readers, and I've come to believe in slrn as the top of the pile. However, if you're just using an X environment and no other platform, pan (the Pimp Ass Newsreader) is a great graphical client.
Re:SLRN or PAN, I would say. (Score:1)
Forte agent (Score:3, Informative)
It was good enough for me to give up nn (and rn, and trn).
Back From The Dead! (Score:2)
Re:Back From The Dead! (Score:1)
We're still waiting for beta 2.0 to begin.
nn (was: Re:Forte agent (Score:1)
gone back to nn. Especially since the
debian nn is finally functional again.
So scoring isn't as finely graduated as other
newsreaders. It still kicks butt, IMHO.
Re:Forte agent (Score:2)
trn rocks...always has (it and its predecessors), always will. Besides, if Windows eats itself, I don't have to worry about losing my killfiles and .newsrc since I run trn (and mutt) on a separate box that runs Linux.
Re:Forte agent (Score:1)
What problem did you encountered while moving between messages?
There are plenty of ways of doing it, and it depends on the sorting method. It's a very powerful program.
Re:Forte agent (Score:1)
Re:Forte agent (Score:1)
Most of the power users (myself included ;) use only the keyboard. We've never seen problem with it. If you're still using it, can you give some example so I can help you? :)
Also, feel free to ask questions in alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent .
You're gonna kick me... (Score:2, Informative)
But IMHO this is a powerfull NNTP client, as it offers all I need to get, read, and post to a NNTP server.
And by the way, UNIX users may (I write this even if I'm sure they wont
Re:You're gonna kick me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, if it satisfies your need it doesn't means that it a powerfull NNTP client. Actually it only provides basic functionality. IMHO NNTP client can not be called powerfull unless it supports at least kill lists.
Do not think I'm trolling. My point is that powerfull NNTP client should have much more features than OE.
Re:You're gonna kick me... (Score:1)
Re:You're gonna kick me... (Score:1)
But wait .... Can it do .... hmm ... scoring ?! Quite powerful feature. For example my Gnus is configured to show only first message from each thread. If I find start of thread intreasting I manually increase score for it so all its messages will be shown. If I do nothing with thread I just don't see other messages in it. Also if I post message any replies have additional score so they are shown on top. And finally messages from some authors are moded up or down so either they are on top also (and can be shown even if I've not selected thread) or they never shown (there are always some trolls on high volume newsgroups). Can OE do something similar?
Re:You're gonna kick me... (Score:1)
What I'd love to see.... (Score:2)
Of course better yet, perhaps the settlement agreement should stipulate 100% porting and compatibility of all MS apps in the Linux environment.
Re:What I'd love to see.... (Score:1)
If it was that way, I think that Dell [dell.com], Compaq [compaq.com], HP [hp.com], and others would sell more Linux-powered PCs (cheaper price), so people would buy more, and probably learn to like Linux as a "really good OS which will help working, playing, learning" --- better than the usual "black screen with command prompt designed by geeks for geeks"
WTF are they waiting for ?
Re:You're gonna kick me... (Score:1)
I've used some Xerox printer utilities that were written for SunOS on FreeBSD. They were pretty basic and worked fine. I'm wondering about something as complex as IE working
Gnus (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gnus (Score:1)
Add to the fact that it's totally programmable and it's hard to beat. You really leverage it when you use it to read your email too.
Just for reference, you can get it at: gnus.org [gnus.org]. It's also a standard part of (X)Emacs, so you should already have it. Just M-x gnus.
Xnews (Score:2, Informative)
http://xnews.3dnews.net/ [3dnews.net]
Re:Xnews (Score:1)
Re:Xnews (Score:1)
Knode (Score:1)
Microplanet "Gravity" (Score:3, Informative)
I always liked 'trn' under Unix, though I think it's pretty much been orphaned now. I've also heard good things about 'slrn' and 'nn'. All of these are console-based readers. I left the Unix scene too long ago to have found a good reader that runs under X.
Under Win32 I think that Microplanet's Gravity [microplanet.com] is a fantastic reader. It got orphaned a year or two ago (and the link is down now, so the company may be defunct) but you can still get it from various download sites. Try Webattack [webattack.com].
When Microplanet abandoned it they released the last build (v2.50) as freeware. Good going, guys! I liked it enough to pay for it at v1.1, and I'm glad it's still available.
Re: trn (Score:2)
zeonews and newsgrabber (Score:4, Informative)
Zeonews is the latest version of newsgrabber [trontech.com.au], of which you might be able to get an older version free.
Google (Score:1)
I've found it to satisfy all of my requirements for an NNTP "client".
Real men read Usenet with tin. (Score:2)
tin is menu-based, with lots of useful options (and not bloated with irrelevant stuff). The basic usage is very simple, and is pretty configurable. If you have a shell account in your ISP, it's the ideal choice.
Re:Real men read Usenet with tin. (Score:1)
I *LOVE* Tin (Score:1)
If you have a shell account in your ISP, it's the ideal choice.
Even if you don't - I use Tin with my cablemodem all the time.
OE (Score:1)
gnus (Score:2)
gnus allows you to filter posts with a manually controlled (but complex) scoring system, or you can turn on a mode which just watches what you tend to read and ignore, and attempts to filter posts you're not likely to enjoy based on who posted it and "artificial stupidity" performed on keywords in the subject lines.
gnus supports color highlighting of different reply levels within a post, useful for tracking the fragments of a discussion by the time a post is 8 replies into a thread.
You can access it remotely with only a text interface (even in color with xemacs or emacs21), or you can access it locally and have a nice graphical interface. If you're on the road, there's no worry about resetting all your read markers as you go to and from.
gnus is written in elisp, which makes it easy to add features you may want. And there are mailing lists and a newsgroup full of fanatics who love making changes if you've got an interesting idea, but don't have the aptitude to implement it.
And of course, like most emacs components, you can customize the hell out of gnus. If there's anything you don't like, chances are someone's already made a configuration option to change its behavior.
mail=news (Score:1)
as it's the most convenient interface - if
configured correctly, i.e.
- a shell script to fetchmail -3 -o -
- piping through a filter (removing control characters, just to be sure)
- cat'ing the results (I have 5 accounts) to my ~/mbox
- calling pine, reading mail&news, the latter online
my favorite: slrn (Score:1)
Forte Agent (Score:1)
I use it in Windows and it also works well in Linux using Wine (www.winehq.com). By far my favorite newsreader.
MT-NewsWatcher (Score:2)
Filtering [smfr.org] is trivial, writing & managing filters is easily done (and without needing to know any specific notation), scoring [smfr.org] is performed identically, saving [smfr.org] text and binaries is accomplished cleanly and with versatility, heck it can even be set to use voice commands [smfr.org] and read back material. It honors every obscure usenet convention thown at it (mail-copies-to [smfr.org], X-face [smfr.org], etc.) and follows every good usage guideline [xs4all.nl] plus handles multiple languages [smfr.org] with aplomb.
Finally the documentation [smfr.org] is simply fantastic. If nothing else this makes it a great program: Clear well-written comprehensive documentation properly laid out, indexed, usefully hyperlinked and always helpful. I can't express how important this is and how useful has been.
Oh yeah, it's a free (as in lucre) Mac application running under both MacOS & MacOS X. However MT-NewsWatcher [smfr.org] is good enough friends have kept old Macs just for running it; it's that good.
Re:MT-NewsWatcher (Score:1)
(I may have SDI and MDI backwards...)
MT-NewsWatcher for Mac (Score:1)
The old OS/2 news reader - NR/2 (Score:1)
MT-Newswatcher (Score:1)
Mozilla (Score:1)
Currently I like using Mozilla [mozilla.org] to access my mail and news simultaniously, as well as have access to a MOO client (MOOzilla [www.moo.ca]) and a web browser all with one package. It is, however, a tad buggy.. I find that some newsgroups consistantly cause the mailer to crash, and I haven't yet gotten a resolution for this bug.
I used to use a perl script I wrote, fetchnews, to read newsgroups and deposit them into mboxes for use with Mutt. Posting to USENET was done by sending to local nntp-alt.bitterness, or whatever newsgroup, which used a qmail wrapper script to send the mail out properly. It was a nice setup, but since I've lost most of the configuration, I've switched to Mozilla.
KDE KNODE for me (Score:2)
I has some drawbacks though: It was cumbersome to use with more than one news.server, the built-in editor was very simple.
The pros:
Fast to load, fast responsive navigation, good keyboard shortcuts. Self contained in one directory, with nice text based config files, making it very easy to move it around, and preserve settings when reinstalling windows.
Nice, easely used options like; watch or ignore threads. Very powerfull 'per group' options, like
I think that Forte Agent was something of a trendsetter regarding GUI newsreaders in its time. And it was and offline newsreader, which really meant something when using a pay per minute modem connection.
Now my preferred nntp client is is KDE Knode, or rather it is not, since our current internet feed provider doesn't have usenet feed:-(, and the free newsservers, don't carry a some of the groups I am interested in.
But so far, Knode seems even more powerfull than Forte Agent in most respects.
Still, it lacks 'per group' expire options (a major letdown for me). And "Score killfiling" is not enough for me, I want real killfilling, eg. delete on the spot.
OTOH, it some really, really nifty features like ">" quote marked text, excellent PGP
All in all, Knode is a powerfull nntp client.
Superpimps "Pan" (GNOME) looks nice too (especially if one likes Forte Agent). Haven't used it in a long time, but AFAIK one of its main features, is its abillity to have several, concurrent downloads, from different servers.
tin (Score:1)
I prefer keyboard navigation to read large quantities of news faster. Tin provides that and article threading.
A lot of other non-gui newsreaders are probably
just as good, but I'm used to the keystrokes.
LazyBoy
Make it a /. Poll (Score:1)
I hate redundancy, but a poll would give you a better consensus from the